Cities of the Dead
by Insomniac Owl
Summary: Strange things are happening in the hidden villages...
1. Konohagakure

**City of the Dead**

_By Insomniac Owl_

* * *

A/N: This collection, in kind translation by Hono Cho, was entered in a Russian fandom battle in late 2011. It won first place in the 'drabble' category.

* * *

Konoha is a place which, having seen, one does not easily forget. There is history here, and blood, and death and betrayal and sadness and it's an _aura_ in the air, something perfectly invisible at first glance, but it's there. It's there.

Coming home, it's something Kakashi can't ignore.

Something has been happening to him lately, and though it's not serious, it's distracting. He'll wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, gather his weapons and gear and step outside, and there things begin, once he steps across the threshold of his door. Sometimes he makes it all the way down the street before he sees the first one, but never any farther than that.

He'll be walking slowly, hiding his cringes, grateful for his mask, but even the mask doesn't hide his shock when he looks up and there, in the face of a boy running past, is Obito. The clothes are different, and he's younger than Kakashi ever saw him, but it's him. The first time this happened Kakashi… well, he freaked out. Grabbed the kid by the collar, jerked him backward, dragged him into the air and demanded his name.

After a brief, useless struggle, the boy spat "Genji."

Pretending coolness, pretending he's actually in control of himself and his mind, Kakashi let him go.

It's this war, he supposes. It brings back memories. But he should have expected that; this shouldn't be affecting him the way it does. He has more important things to focus on, like the fact that his team is racing all over the continent, putting their lives on the line for someone Kakashi gave up on a long time ago. Like the fact that Konoha is only half rebuilt, and still vulnerable to attack. He can't afford to let his attention wander, not now, not when he's needed most.

Nonetheless, he dwells on it. At night, he figures it must be the effect of so many battles. It's only logical. Kill too many people and eventually they crawl out of your nightmares and invade your waking life too. It's just that it's such a damn inopportune time for it to happen.

Never once does it cross his mind that it could be anything more than that, because he doesn't have the time to entertain more fantastic notions. He's too busy rebuilding houses and organizing patrols. He's too busy trying not to collapse from exhaustion. He's too busy trying as hard as he can _not to notice_ Rin selling dumplings from a cart downtown. He buys one from her, to test himself, and is shaken when he sees the name tag pinned to her chest because it says Mariko, not Rin, the way it should, the way it should, the way it...

That afternoon he helps rebuild the hospital with a man who looks just like Zabuza, but no one else notices.

There is an orderly at the medical center, whose tag says Kaori but whose face says Chiyo.

In the evenings, he passes a ramen stand operated by Asuma.

There comes a time in every man's life when the number of dead men he knows outnumbers the living. For Kakashi, this time seems to have come particularly early. And late one night, when it's just him in the room and he can't see anyone, he thinks he might have it figured out. It's a simple, scientific, impossible answer: his mind is refusing to accept more faces, more expressions, and instead attaches to the living the faces of the dead, seeing a familiar nose and transforming the entire face to match.

And perhaps, he thinks, suddenly feeling exposed in the middle of his bed with the sheets all tangled around him, perhaps, for each of them, he too resembles a dead friend or relative, or stranger assassinated in the middle of the street one sunny afternoon. Perhaps his face, too, is one that causes people to stop while walking, unfamiliar names flying to their lips before they can apologize. Sorry, I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else.

It's this city, he thinks, closing his eyes. It's just this city. Too much history, too much death. He felt the weight of it when he came back, hanging over the half-constructed buildings like a shroud. With this war going on, of course it's more noticeable than it usually is; it's hanging over everyone, creeping into their bodies and warping their vision. It's just an effect of the tension, the paranoia, the desperation that so often comes with war.

Perhaps it's a genjutsu; perhaps they're stressed; perhaps they're dreaming.

Perhaps they're all dying, and in the process finding people they've known.

**end**


	2. Sunagakure

**Cities of the Dead**

Part II: Sunagakure

_By Insomniac Owl_

-

In a place like Sunagakure, they have to be especially careful with their dead. Each windstorm would uncover hundreds of bodies if they didn't take precautions, but the nets and weights keep them underground in all but the worst weather. Even so, more and more people are choosing to be cremated. This doesn't bother Gaara. He knows it should - centuries of tradition and all that – but it's getting crowded underground. They've started burying people on top of one another, because no one wants to travel to a graveyard miles away in the desert, and it's getting crowded. He can tell. At night, when he lets his mind wander, he can feel the bodies stacked on top of one another, feel their dissatisfaction.

Even the dead need space. They have their own lives down there, with the sand packed in around them, and they can't fit many more bodies. The limits of their city only stretch as far as Sunagakure's, but there are more and more dead people every year, and the number of living stays relatively constant. But they've been dissatisfied for a long time. Gaara knows this. It's getting too crowded down there, and the situation won't get any better.

Too many people are dying.

Eventually, something will break.

This is just a silly, romantic vision of his, but he has the idea they're waiting for a sandstorm, one that will blow and blow and leave them exposed for the first time in years. The desert is an excellent preserver of corpses; once exposed they'll will look much as they had in life, except their skin will have vacuum-sealed itself across their bones, stretched paper-thin over joints and the places where muscles used to be.

When that happens they'll open dry, perfectly preserved eyelids to reveal perfectly empty sockets, and breathe sighs of relief. Then, and only then, will Gaara feel that all of his people are satisfied.

**end.**


	3. Kirigakure

**Cities of the Dead**

Part III: Kirigakure

_By Insomniac Owl_

-

The citizens of Kirigakure do not bury their dead. Instead they float them off to sea in sleek-prowed rowboats, arms crossed neatly over their chests and, if they were ninja, their weapons laid out at their sides.

It is a funeral Kisame will never have but, truth be told, he doesn't mind.

Because Kirigakure does not bury its dead, it is not uncommon to see sobbing parents and spouses perched at the edge of the water, staring out over the waves. Because they can never visit the dead, as it is possible to do in cities which have graveyards, those wishing to visit come to the water instead. It was a common enough sight, when he was younger and walking home from the academy, to see people sitting at the edges of the water. Their legs dangled over the cement breakers; their shoulders slumped. Sometimes they cried aloud.

In the water at the edges of the village, you can see where the dead have gone to. It is a place of mirrors and reflections, every gesture made in the world of the living re-enacted with perfect precision on the water's surface. When the mourning parents and spouses return to their homes they remember these images; every face and gesture answered, from the mirror, by a face or gesture inverted, flipped, made opposite.

When they sleep, they imagine their son, their husband, their daughter alive and well in that strange double world.

And in the morning, they return to the water.

They seek in its bright, reflective surfaces an explanation, even at the risk of finding nothing there at all; explanations for different questions, for different, better lives that could have been but were not, or reasons that are incomplete, contradictory, disappointing.

Kisame, world-wise even as a child, forgot these reflections. He denied them existence. He calls up shadows of it with his jutsu, every now and then, shimmering pools of water that swallow his enemies, but he makes his own graves, sending the dead on not with ceremonies and sleek-prowed boats but to the accompaniment of their own screams. Kisame no longer turns to the water for answers. Instead he makes his own, and in doing so he has discovered the most secret part of death, which is that it can be manipulated, warped, and erased.

Ripples wipe out entire lives, as completely as if they'd never existed.

**end.**


	4. Otogakure

**Cities** **of** **the** **Dead**

Part IV: Otogakure

_By Insomniac Owl_

-

Otogakure is the sort of place that kills you. Those who come are already dying, of course – they are sick, or old, or injured, whether they know it or not – but in the end it is the city that takes them. It's only to be expected. Deprive someone of light and clean air long enough, expose them instead to evil, greed, and corruption, and the outcome is inevitable.

Nothing of the place can be seen from above ground. People say "It's down there," and we have to believe them because, really, there's no way to know. There is no way to crawl into those tunnels and seek out the truth – if such a thing even exists.

It is said that Otogakure is a place for those with nothing to lose. It is said that Otogakure's master, a man with flat black hair and a thin body, knows this and takes advantage of it, luring travelers in with promises and a snake's good manners. Imprisoned travelers can attempt escape, but the exits in that place are well camouflaged, hidden behind layers of dead ends like a pyramid. It is said they are beaten, drugged, brainwashed until they choose to stay, would kill to stay, would die to stay. It is said that once you enter that place, you do not come out. But all we know of the place are myths and legends, ghost stories and rumors of a boy with red eyes that kill you if you so much as look at them, and of a man who devours people whole. The land is deserted. At night, if you put your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam.

**end.**


End file.
